Blogging Christopher Pike novels - because that's what I continue to do.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Pre-Tales of Terror #2

Joys and evils to savor.

The Weird and the Wonderful.

1998, 207 pages

Some advice I got from a friend during the golden age of compact discs: Play a CD on random to see how good it REALLY is, without the corporately orchestrated song order manipulating your brain. I do the same thing with short story collections.

I started #2 Tales of Terror on the second story, but not before flipping the pages and noticing that Mr. Pike himself wrote a short introduction to each story! OMG - his own words! Not storytelling, or his about the author paragraph, but REAL thoughts and opinions and information!

Each story is like an unholy remix of several previous plots all crammed into 40 pages. It's as "Yikes!" as it sounds. I want to analyze it all properly, so every day this week check in for a post about a different Tale of Terror from this collection.

I hope you're totally in the mood to savor some evil, and to read some totally unexpected personal info about our beloved author. See you later today for the first story, The Tomb of Time.

5 comments:

oh man, i am so jazzed about this! though i think i preferred the other Tales of Terror, the one where Marvin Summer makes an appearance, but probably mostly because Master of Murder might be my all time favorite Pike.

I don't know...track order on CDs (like set lists at concerts) aren't necessarily some corporate sell point. There are reasons that human beings put things in order. Where else could those epic, 12 minute Tori Amos songs go but at the end of the CDs? Anyway, I have never read this one, so I'm pretty psyched!

Sundae - You'll be glad to know that Marvin has a story in this one too: The Burning Witch.

Bookslide - See, the thing is that you have taste. And I, uh, don't. I think I was listening to a Latoya Jackson album and starting to like it, so my pal thought the song order was brainwashing me. I agree though, that if it's supposed to be artful storytelling or something, order can be everything. But sadly not usually with the kind of crap that I enjoy! :)

ah, i think i do remember that story. it wasn't nearly as good as the one where Marvin gets blackmailed into writing that novel, though i fail so much at remembering titles that i could very well be confusing the two.

Aw, man! I really want this. I've made it my goal in life to get all the Pike books. But I was just looking at this on Amazon UK, and one is up for £206.85!!! Yowsers! Even the others, from £7.21 is a bit too expensive for me at the moment. :( Anyways, I don't know why I'm rambling on because no one here knows me... I just wanted to share the £206.85-ness. Crazy!